Photos Inaccessible in Map Journal

[JacobAman]

I have a Map Journal in which I have uploaded images to the map using the upload tool.  The app was working fine for a few days, but now the images are no longer accessible, and since they are stored in the map, I do not have access to the directory.  

I could simply go in and delete the photos and upload them again, or host them on a web server.  But this is the ESRI recommended method for adding photos, and I would prefer this method.  What's the problem?

Link to the app:

http://arcg.is/2muguk0 

Thanks for any help!

[NicoleGamble1 · Accepted solution]

It looks like there are expired tokens on the end of your image urls that are causing the problem. The images appear to be shared publicly, so removing this token should resolve the problem.

So for the first image, it is using the link:

http://www.arcgis.com/sharing/rest/content/items/7d8c877fdf8b42418e3110ad6cdd454a/resources/11368_Up... 

If you try pasting this url into your browser it will give you an 'Invalid token' error. If you remove the token from the end of the url, it works:

http://www.arcgis.com/sharing/rest/content/items/7d8c877fdf8b42418e3110ad6cdd454a/resources/11368_Up... 

A few potential ways to fix this:

1.Edit your Story Map and Re-upload the photos the same way you originally added them and double check the url to make sure it doesn't have a token at the end

2. Edit your Story Map, edit the section with the broken link, click the 'Source' button (in red below), then remove the token from the end of the link  directly and save:

This is just what I thought of so far, there may be other ways of doing this. Hope this helps!

[JacobAman]

Thank you for the reply Nicole.

Both of these fixes work.

How do I avoid this in the future?  I simply used the upload tool when creating the Map Journal which embeds the photos in the Story Map, so the URL is generated automatically by ArcGIS Online.  

[NicoleGamble1]

From my testing, if I create a Map Journal and sharing is set to private, then view the story, I can see that the token is added on the end of the image url. However, after I switched the Map Journal so it was shared publicly, when viewing the Story Map Journal if I open the image in a new tab the token is no longer there. I'm not sure why this is not the case for you but maybe it's a difference in the steps we're following?

Here are the steps I used if you want to try this out on a new Map Journal and check if you get the same results:

1. Logged in to storymaps.arcgis.com > Create Story

2. Map Journal > Ok

3. Chose the side panel layout

4. For my main stage content I just create a simple map

5. Edited the side panel > add image > Upload file > browsed to my image

6. Saved Story Map Journal (Sharing is still set to private). Viewed Story, then opened my image in a new tab. The image url has a token at the end

7. Edit the Story Map Journal and changed the Sharing to Public. 

8. Viewed story, then opened my image in a new tab. The image no longer has a token at the end.

[JacobAman2]

Hi Nicole, thanks again for your reply.

As far as I can remember those are the steps that I followed, creating the app, uploading photos, and then making the app public when I was done.  I have had this happen with a Map Series as well, and fixed the issue by editing the html to remove the tokens, as you suggested.  I will pay closer attention to the steps next time, and see if I can recreate the issue.

I can also see that making the app private again causes the tokens to reappear, but then switching back to public removes them.

So, does the token indicate whether the images are publicly shared, and if there is a token, then they can't be viewed in a public app?  If that is the case, then I guess the mystery here is why the tokens weren't removed when I made the app public...

Well, at least now I can fix the problem if it happens again.  Thanks!